Icon Tutorial #2

[_hoshi]

my second icon tutorial featuring beautiful keira knightley

i used adobe photoshop 7 but i'm sure it translates easily!
you should have a basic knowledge of your graphics programme -

we'll be going from [ this ] to this



please note that i made the icon several weeks ago and i can't remember each step exactly, but i tried to be as accurate in my description as possible. please also keep in mind that some settings and steps might vary depending on the pic you're working with and on the look you're going for. i guess you just can't follow this tut step by step and achieve the same effect on every other picture! thanks for understanding this! :)

it is also possible that i somewhere in the icon-making process used a pink brush on her lips (layer to soft light) to improve the lips' color... just see [ my first tut ] on how to do this ;)

i started off with [ this ] beautiful picture of keira from the movie "the jacket"

i cropped it, then i sharpened it once, smoothed out the skin with a small fuzzy round brush and used the sharpen tool on the eyes and lips to make them more shiny:



i copied the base, desaturated the copy (ctrl+shift+u) and set it to screen, 25% opacity:



another base copy on which i used a gaussian blur set to about 1,2. i set the copy to soft light, 100% opacity and erased her moth, eyes and her top becaus otherwise the result would have been too blurry and i wanted her to be as sharp as possible.



add an exclusion layer (100% opacity) filled with #01020C (depending from your pic you can also skip this step).

now i used my too favourite gradients (by crumblingwalls):


set to soft light, 41% opacity which has this effect:



then i used


set to lighten, 33% opacity

effect:


a little too light and blurry, don't you think? ;) so i copied the base again, went to image -> adjustments -> hue/saturation and lowered the saturation to about -60 (remember that you might be in favour of a different value, depending on your pic!); i set this base copy to soft light, 100% again.



now comes a step i personally like to do every time i think the colouring is fine: i create a new layer and copy/merge all visible layers (sorry, i don't know the correct english expression for i use photoshop in german *grin*) by pressing ctrl+shift+alt+e at a time.

then i used this
light texture by sheld0n and set it to screen, 100% opacity.
now i had this:



i erased the texture where it covered her hair, neck and clothes (to make it look as if the light came from behind).



but i found there was still too much empty space in the background and too much light in the upper left corner, so i looked for some more balance. this is why i chose the "round marquee tool" (sorry it that's not the correct term, just right click on the rectangular marquee tool and choose the ellipsis^^). i circled the intensive small luminous spot in the upper left corner, pressed ctrl+c to copy this area and then pressed ctrl+v to paste it on a new layer (set this layer to screen to, this is important!). i moved it around until i was satisfied with the result and now my icon looked like this:



(please note that with some textures it might be necessary to use the blur tool on the edges of the circle, depending from the background, to make it look smoother and not like just "cut out")

almost done! :)

i now added some text (different colors, sizes and fonts, just play around a little and do whatever you please; i for example used the fonts "decker" and "mammagamma")...

aaaaaaaand...

THIS is my result:



that's it, simply as that!
i hope you liked my tut and nothing was unclear. if so, please tell me and i'll try to find a better explanation! ;)